Second Burial: New Zealand Chinese Experience 1883 and 1902

Second Burial: New Zealand Chinese Experience 1883 and 1902 - Researched by Helen Wong
ISBN 978-0-473-24298-5


The Cantonese custom of secondary burial, the idea of exhuming the dead, cleaning the bones, and then burying them again, helps to explain why so many (overseas) Chinese were not only willing to exhume their dead but also to clean the bones and put them in containers for shipment back to China. * Reburial: Exhuming the Dead and Returning Them to China http://www.cinarc.org/Death-2.html#anchor_14

There were two periods of mass exhumation of Chinese in New Zealand, organised for the Panyu people, by the Dunedin Sew Hoy family.

In 1883, 286 Chinese from the South Island were repatriated on the Hoi How.

And in 1902, 499 were aboard the ill fated Ventnor when it sank 10 miles off the Hokianga Heads. This time Panyu men from both the South Island and the North Island were included, as well as eleven Wellington men from the Jung Seng county of China.

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